Abstract
My goal here is straightforward: to illuminate Fichte’s conception of how one actually “does” philosophy not by examining his actual practice in his scientific presentations of the Wissenschaftslehre, but by considering his discussions of this issue in his various “introductory” or, in his terminology, “critical”1 writings and lectures. More specifically, I aim to compare what he had to say about the distinctive “method” of the Wissenschaftslehre in 1794, in On the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre, with what he wrote about this same topic in 1797, in his two Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre, and in 1801, in his Sun-Clear Report on the Essence of the Latest Philosophy, and to then to draw some general conclusions about the evolution of his conception of his own method between 1794 and 1801.
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Notes
This same term is also employed by Fichte, somewhat confusingly, as the name for the general form of I-hood itself, in which subject and object are immediately identified and as a description of our consciousness of the moral law as a Kantian “fact of reason.” Here, however, we are concerned only with the former methodological meaning of the term. For further discussion of this point see Chapter 8 of Daniel Breazeale, Thinking Through the Wissenschaftslehre: Themes from Fichte’s Early Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Fichte’s intention of writing and publishing a new Sun-Clear Report on his philosophy is first mentioned in his letter to Cotta of January 13, 1800. It appears that he did not actually begin work on this project until the summer of that year, however. In his August 16, 1800, letter to Friedrich Schlegel, he reports that he is hard at work on a book dedicated to explaining “what is really going in the Wissenschaftslehre” (GA III/4, 284) and predicts that it will be finished in time for the fall book fair. In another letter to Cotta, written the same day as the letter to Schlegel, he informs him that a local Berlin publisher (Georg Andreas Reimer) will be publishing what is now described as a “Sun-Clear Report on the Actual Tendency of the Wissenschaftslehre” (GA III/4, 286).This project was temporarily set aside in the fall while he was composing “The Closed Commercial State” and trying to revise his Jena lectures on Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo for publication. This was also the period during which he was engaged in an intense philosophical correspondence with Schelling concerning the nature and limits of philosophy and the relationship of the Wissenschaftslehre to Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature and new System of Identity. By the beginning of 1801, Fichte had abandoned his efforts to revise the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo and was making plans for an altogether new and fresh presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre. It was also at this time that he resumed work on the book he was now calling “Sonnenklarer Bericht an das größere Publikum über das eigentliche Wesen der neuesten Philosophie” (CC, 43, 115; GA I/7, 189, 267). In his October 21, 1800, letter to his new publisher, Reimer, Fichte explained that he had postponed work on the Sonnenklarer Bericht in order to work on the new version of the Wissenschaftslehre but promised to have the Sun-Clear Report finished in time for the Easter 1801 book fair. In this same letter he also described the latter as “an almost inseparable introduction to the new presentation,” which will contain no introduction of its own but simply refer readers to the Sun-Clear Report (GA III/4, 338). During this same period he also composed a “Public Announcement” of the anticipated “New Version” of the Wissenschaftslehre. This document, which is dated November 4, 1800 (though it was not actually published until January 1801) contains a valuable discussion of the distinctive method of transcendental philosophy and remarks on the relationship between mathematical and philosophical construction that anticipate and in some respects supplement Fichte’s remarks on the same subject in the “Third Lesson of the Sun-Clear Report” (see “[Ankündigung:] Seit sechs Jahren,” GA I/7, 153–164; IWL, 186–201). In fact, however, Fichte abandoned his efforts to produce a New Presentation of his system on the basis of his Jena lectures in the final weeks of 1800 or first weeks of 1801. See the unfinished “Neue Bearbeitung der W. L. 1800,” GA II/6, 331–402, partially translated by David W. Wood as “New Version of the Wissenschaftslehre,” in The Philosophical Rupture between Fichte and Schelling: Selected Texts and Correspondence (1800–1802), trans. and ed. Michael G. Vater and David W. Wood (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012), 93–118. By the time he returned to the project of finishing the “Sun-Clear Report,” he had not only abandoned work on the “New Presentation,” for which it had been intended as a popular introduction, but was already making plans for a radically new presentation of his system: the Wissenschaftslehre of 1801/1802. The latter would adopt an altogether new starting point: not a first principle expressing the unity and internal differentiation of the I nor a simple invitation to “think the I” but an analysis of what is involved in any genuine knowledge claim whatsoever. This new presentation was also intended to make clear the gulf between the Wissenschaftslehre and Schelling’s new System of Identity. This change in Fichte’s plans is obliquely reflected in the contents of the Sun-Clear Report, the first three lessons of which were written in the summer of 1800, whereas the final three, along with the foreword and afterword, were composed half a year later, in the first few months of 1801.
This, according to Fichte, is sufficient to insulate the Wissenschaftslehre from charges of “psychologism,” since psychology deals only with the empirical “facts of consciousness” and not with the pure and original acts of the same. “We are here talking not about the discovery of something that is already finished, but of the discovery of something that first has to be produced by a free act of thinking. [Hence] the WL is not psychology, and the latter is itself nothing” (CC, 72–73; GA I/7, 222). This is a point frequently made by Fichte in his writings of this period, since the charge of “psychologism” was widely raised against the Wissenschaftslehre by, for example, Heusinger, Reinhold, and Nicolai. For a detailed account of the various criticisms raised against the Wissenschaftslehre at the time Fichte was composing the Sun-Clear Report, which was intended, at least in part, as a response to these criticisms, see Breazeale, “Towards a Wissenschaftslehre More Geometrico (1800–1801),” in After Jena: New Essays on Fichte’s Later Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008), 3–40.This concept of the pure I is also described by Fichte as the common point that unites ordinary consciousness and the Wissenschaftslehre, inasmuch as it is produced by an abstraction from ordinary consciousness and philosophy and is in turn the starting point for the philosopher’s process of deriving further acts from this same concept (CC, 71; GA I/7, 220).
For a detailed and informative discussion of this entire topic, see David W. Wood, “Mathesis of the Mind”: A Study of Fichte’s “Wissenschaftslehre” and Geometry (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2012).
For further discussion of this point, see Breazeale, “‘Der Blitz der Einsicht’ and ‘der Akt der Evidenz’: A Theme from Fichte’s Berlin Introductions to Philosophy.” Fichte-Studien 31 (2007): 1–15.
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Breazeale, D. (2014). Fichte’s Public “Discourses on Method,” 1794–1801: A Comparative Study. In: Rockmore, T., Breazeale, D. (eds) Fichte and Transcendental Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137412232_3
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